PBOC Researcher Sees Room for Higher Interest Rates

Faster factory inflation and higher industrial profits in the past year have created space for an increase in overall interest rates, People’s Bank of China researcher Ji Min said, according to a report by China Daily.

Inflation and foreign exchange rates also have to be factored in before adjusting interest rates, the newspaper cited Ji, deputy head of the central bank’s research bureau, as saying.

China’s central bank will make modest increases in money-market rates in 2018 as it aims to keep up the pressure on deleveraging and prevent too much divergence with U.S. policy, according to a Bloomberg survey published earlier this month.

Economists don’t forecast any change to the benchmark rate, which sets borrowing costs economy-wide, through early 2020, according to a separate survey by Bloomberg. The central bank has kept the one-year lending rate unchanged since October 2015.